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Coast egg chapati
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Coast egg chapati

Egg-filled chapati parcels

The famous coast street snack: paper-thin dough wrapped around a samosa chapati, spiced onion and capsicum filling and a beaten egg, folded into a square parcel and fried slowly until crisp and golden. Make them just before serving. Serve hot with a crunchy carrot, cabbage and cucumber salad and red chilli and tamarind chutneys. Contains egg.

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Hamsili pilavAnchovy-wrapped rice bake

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GildaOlive, anchovy and pepper skewer

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Ghorabieh TabriziAlmond and egg-white cookies

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Giouvetsi takes its name from the glazed clay dish it is baked in, and in Greek homes it is the Sunday lunch that gets put in the oven before church: chunks of beef braised with tomato, cinnamon and allspice, then finished with kritharaki (orzo) that soaks up every drop of the sauce. It arrives at the table bubbling, with grated cheese melting on top. This version uses wine to deglaze, which is traditional; use extra stock for an alcohol-free dish. Common mistake: adding the orzo with too little liquid, so it bakes dry and sticks; it needs about four times its weight in hot stock. Chef's tip: stir the orzo halfway through baking so the top pieces don't harden.

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From Quibdó and the river towns of the Chocó comes a rice dish built on coconut, where cubes of white cheese are pushed into the pot near the end and left to melt into sticky, golden pockets; clavado means nailed in. The coconut milk, ideally pressed from freshly grated coconut, gives the rice a creamy, gently sweet base, and the Pacific herbs of the azotea, the raised kitchen garden, add a sharp green note. It is a weekday lunch at home, eaten with fried plantain, avocado or alongside fried fish for those who eat it. White cheese in Colombia is usually set with animal rennet, so use a vegetarian (microbial-rennet) halloumi or mozzarella-style cheese if needed. Stirring after the cheese goes in is the slip that turns it to mush, so poke the cheese into the rice and then leave the lid on. Chef's tip: culantro (long-leaf coriander) from Asian or Caribbean shops is close to the Chocó herbs; use ordinary coriander stems if not.

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Pequi is the taste of the cerrado: a yellow-orange fruit with a powerful perfume, somewhere between cheese, apricot and petrol, that goianos love and newcomers need time to get used to. In Goiânia and around Brasília, rice cooked with pequi turns golden and absorbs that aroma; it is often made with chicken, but this meatless version is everyday food in the November-to-February season. Pequi is sold fresh in cerrado markets and frozen or jarred in brine in Brazilian shops elsewhere. Important: the stone inside the flesh is covered in fine, sharp spines. Never bite into a pequi; gnaw the flesh off gently with your teeth, and warn your guests. The usual slip is stirring the rice too much after the water goes in, which breaks the soft fruit apart. Chef's tip: fry the pequi in the oil first until it colours, because that flavoured oil is what tints and scents every grain.

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Along the Caribbean coast from Cartagena to Santa Marta, the bollo de yuca is a staple to set beside fried fish, a bowl of soup or a slice of fresh white cheese. Raw cassava is grated, kneaded with a little salt and sometimes a few anise seeds, then wrapped and boiled until it turns translucent and pleasantly chewy, with a mild, slightly sweet flavour. Market sellers stack them by the dozen, and they keep well, so many households buy enough for several days. Cassava must always be fully cooked and peeled down past the pink inner layer, since the raw root contains natural toxins that cooking removes. Squeezing the grated cassava too hard is the error that ruins it: bone-dry dough gives tough, rubbery bollos, so you only want to press out the loose juice. Frozen grated cassava from Latin or African shops works well. Chef's tip: wet your hands before rolling the logs, because the starch sticks to dry palms.

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Ghalieh meygooSpicy prawn and tamarind stew

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Ghalieh mahi is the signature stew of the Persian Gulf ports of Bushehr and Abadan, cooked for Friday lunches and big family gatherings. It starts with a mountain of coriander and a little fenugreek fried slowly in oil with garlic until almost black-green, then sharpened with tamarind and warmed with chilli and turmeric before chunks of firm fish are poached in it. The result is dark, sour, fragrant and properly hot, eaten over plain white rice. A common mistake is rushing the herbs: they need a full 20 minutes of frying or the stew tastes grassy instead of deep. Chef's tip: brown the fish pieces quickly before they go into the sauce; they hold together better and add a little roasted flavour.

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Arroz con conejoRabbit and rosemary rice

On Sundays in the Murcian countryside, rice with rabbit is cooked in a wide, flat pan over a fire of vine shoots, and the whole family eats straight from the edges. The rice is Calasparra, grown along the Segura river in the north of the region, and the flavour comes from rabbit browned slowly in olive oil, dried ñora pepper, saffron and a sprig of mountain rosemary laid on top at the end. Many cooks add snails too. Chef's tip: brown the rabbit really well, until golden and sticky, because that crust is where the flavour of the broth comes from.

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GermknödelSteamed plum jam dumpling

After a morning on the slopes, Austrians head into the mountain huts of Tyrol, Salzburg and Styria for one thing: a Germknödel the size of a fist, steamed until pillowy and split open to reveal dark plum butter. It comes drowned in melted butter, or in vanilla sauce, under a thick snow of ground poppy seeds and icing sugar, and it is eaten as a whole meal. The dough is soft and slightly sweet, and the powidl inside is tart and jammy. A common mistake is lifting the lid while they steam; the dumplings deflate and turn heavy. Chef's tip: seal each dumpling with the seam underneath and let them prove a second time on squares of baking paper, so you can move them without denting them.

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